Way back in the day when I used to run PluginID, I took an afternoon out to make a few graphics for my blog sidebar which would feature my most popular blog posts. Though they did look attractive – and I quickly found other bloggers imitating the idea – I found myself constantly having to make new images any time I made a hit post.

With ViperChill, I was fortunate to have a plugin come with my theme called ‘Popular Posts’. It’s basically just a widget that you currently see in my sidebar (for now). When I designed Butterflyist for Andrea for the blogging case study project, we made sure she purchased a theme which had a similar plugin installed. Without them we would have been a little lost. Until now.

It wasn’t until I came across the sidebar of Engadget about a year ago and the new way they were displaying their blog posts that I decided I had to make my own plugin that let you show off your top content in style. Their design was really attractive, and the width of each highlighted post was proportional to how many comments or views it had received (genius!)

I would love to show it to you, but since their traffic levels started taking a dip because of The Verge, they basically copied The Verge’s site framework on post pages and totally reworked their sidebar.

6 months ago Graeme (the lead developer of OptinSkin) sent me a screenshot of the first iteration of turning our idea into a plugin. Today, it’s the most advanced solution available for WordPress users who wish to not only highlight blog posts, but to showcase affiliate products, product reviews and site pages, without having to know any HTML or CSS.

Turning off Sales on Monday 18th March at 12 Noon (EST)

When we launched OptinSkin one year ago, the support that we had to deal with was insane. We received far more customers than we had ever imagined, and our inbox quickly became overloaded. By opening for just 48 hours (and then opening fully in a few days) we should help to prevent this, and reward customers who take a chance with us early on with a discount.

This also gives us an opportunity to get feedback from people who are going to use the plugin in ways we haven’t even thought of yet, so we can add features and make changes quickly without the initial support burden.

There’s a lot more I want to say on this topic, like why I’ve continued to focus on software and what the highs and lows have been in transforming my business efforts have been, but I really want you to check this out and give it a try if you think it’s for you.

A really long time coming…

We’ve been discussing this project as far back as June (that’s 9 months ago) – shown in the random screenshot below – so it’s honestly a big relief to finally launch it and share it with the world. This is going to free up some of my more personal time, and I have a lot of posts lined up here for VC. Thanks for checking it out, and maybe I’ll see you in the members area!

P.S. If this isn’t for you, no problem at all. Now that we’ve finally got this out there, I can return to normal posting!

It’s a great idea to come out with this great project! As OptinSkin, I really like the management part of the plugin and the result looks very cool and attractive. I think I will purchase it pretty soon, it would suit perfectly to some of my blogs

Glen, would love to look further into this. But honestly, OptIn Skin has been hard to work with in its design and its results haven’t been that great. The concept is great, but there aren’t enough wysiwyg options for a non-coder like me.

Could you give an example of where there aren’t enough options? I will say that there are far more in PostSkin, but that is because a few Skin’s with OS are mostly image based (only 5% of them). Images are hard enough to edit in Photoshop, and it’s pretty much impossible to do so via a web based application.

Or were you talking about normal designs that aren’t graphic based? We’re always looking to add more features where necessary…

I have been searching for ways to get a kind of think like this working on my blog using codes and callout functions but nothing seems to work. But with this great plugin, and the strategic call-to-action you have used, I think I’d have to get mine before someone else took my place.

This is great, I am fairly new but being able to create easy CUSTOM links to affiliates or popular content is HUGE! I am starting a couple of different projects other then the dpm site and cannot wait to put some of this into action. Still on my honeymoon, off to water jetpack, but when I get back I’ll load this baby up and get to work.
Thanks for the tools, as I implement I will send you a couple of screen shots!

Does it have the capability to list specific posts on the side bar targeting specific pages?

For example, if have page/post called HotelReviews.com/Vegas and I want to only show Vegas Hotels that are available on the side bar for such page only on my site. Another example, HotelReviews.com/newyork for this post we only want New York Hotels to be listed on the side bar (excluding Vegas Hotels from previous post)

Ideally, every City/State name page/post will have a unique side bar targeting only specific local Hotels for said page/post – I’m confused now :o)

Another good product at a reasonable price. I’m in and already playing with it now. I’ve come across a couple of tweaks that I’d like to suggest for the next version. Is the support e-mail in the member area the best way to do that?

As always, you’ve come up with yet another fantastic solution that helps everyone, whether novice or seasoned pro. I especially like that multiple forms of links can be highlighted using PostSkin — one more feature that made it easy for me to make the purchase today.

Another awesome and classic plugin from Glen, in reality the concept looks simple but the plugin looks advance for most of us that lack coding understanding like this. i can’t wait to get my own copy of the plugin……………..kind of thinking how many bloggers will love to have this plugin. just like the last one that came out( optinskin) over 300,000 blogs are making use of it. kind of thinking what the outcome of postskin would be…….. Thanks for helping the blogging community.

Nice work Glen! I love the way you always seem to be able to find a missing element and then over-deliver like crazy. I see optin skin everywhere these days, I bet this will be no different. Look forward to seeing some regular posting back again too.

Hi Glen, another awesome plugin! I’ve been looking for an easy to configure plugin to add popular posts with thumbnails at the sidebar and I think I just found one!

By the way, Graeme Boy mentioned in the screenshot above about writing to the database every time a post is read, wouldn’t that have any negative impact on a site’s loading speed/performance, etc.? I’m pretty sure you have considered this so this might be a dumb question, but I’ll ask anyway just to be sure.

With regard to the freebie plugin that comes with PostSkin, the one that shows unreplied comments, is it compatible with the wordpress plugin “Subscribe To Comments Reloaded”? I am using a similar plugin (My Comments Manager) to list down comments I have not replied to yet, but I have to disable “Subscribe To Comments Reloaded” in order for it to display the unreplied comments correctly on my wordpress dashboard (otherwise, I just get a list of unreplied comments but with no content). I hope you can confirm this, if it’s not too much to ask.

Hi Glen, always difficult to resist to your products :-). It’s in the pocket and will start using it tomorrow.
One thing came to my mind: When using it to promote Amazon products, it would be handy to have a tool included allowing to create the Affiliate links more rapidly:
- for example some sort of Amazon ASIN catcher and then a drop down in the postskin to select the ASIN catched, combined with
- a possibility to create your affiliate link automatically (by entering the affiliate ID only once).
I’m asking probably a bit too much… but just in case.
Cheers
Tom

No sidebars. Maybe watch the sales video on the sales page? It shows you what we do (in the most basic terms) in about 20 seconds if you don’t have time to watch the whole thing.

It lets you highlight and style any type of content you want (posts, pages, affiliate products, hotels, amazon products, whatever) – with graphics, click tracking, and fonts without having to touch a smidgen of HTML or CSS, and place it anywhere on your blog (not just sidebars) in literally seconds.

Just updated the plugin in the members area (deactivate and delete the current plugin – you wont lose Skins) and tell me if that helps. If not we’ll add in the option for you. Thank you for purchasing!

Great effort Glen and I really like the demo for the plugin. I have recently come across a new plugin announced by GroupDocs for WordPress which integrates its Viewer App to allow users to view documents online in the browser, without worrying about the document format or layout. You should also check it out and make use of it like I am. Thanks!

I had the issue with turning off clicktracking. Thanks for looking into it, but still doesn’t work for me. I uninstalled and uploaded the latest version in the member area. Still not sure where/how to turn off clicktracking.

Hey Again- Looks like this hasn’t been fixed yet, wondering if clicktracking is causing the links to not load right away at times. I’ve even had a few folks responding to me that they don’t work or cause a 3-4 second delay when clicking. Maybe this is due to the link tracking feature? The same links outside of the postskin plugin respond quickly.

Please let me know your thoughts on that. Otherwise love the plugin (as well as Optinskin which I just got).

Hey Glen!! So glad your back had to go through VC withdrawal….just can’t find your content quality matched anywhere. SO, now that ur back here (btw love the ideas behind PostSkin, I REALLY could’ve used this two weeks ago…) I think you need to make a new plugin for membership websites now. You guys are really good at identifying gaps in the market and you create REALLY well made products. I use optin skin on over half of my sites and it still converts amazingly well. I’m building a membership site right now and am DROWNING. (I’m not a designer, but can do my own inline styling and am pretty good with css). There are so many of these “membership” plugins that are being made by people who really have no business touching a line of code. So Glen, your mission; should you choose to accept it is to create a membership plugin that combines ease of use AND all the bells and whistles. =) LOL

Glen, I tip my hat to you. You are an impressive dude. Just read your profile bits and you are living the life brother. Take it easy, the life of a digital nomad sounds pretty cool compared to many. All the finest, lee

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About

Hey, I'm Glen. In February 2009 I quit my full-time job and have made my living from the internet ever since. Having previously worked as the Social Media Manager for the likes of Nissan and Hewlett Packard, I took my skills and successfully applied them to my own projects. ViperChill is the place I share everything I've learned in order to help other people make a living online, and to live in the Cloud.

Unlike most people in this industry, I don't make my living online by teaching other people how to make their living online. If you would like to learn more about me, then click here.